In the World

Other people saying things, March on Washington edition

"This was the genesis of the network of democratic socialists who seven years later were to conceive, organize, and set the themes for the March on Washington."

"Bayard Rustin, the march’s chief organizer, was standing at the Washington Monument, where reporters pressed him about why so few people had shown up. Rustin looked intently at a yellow legal pad in his hand. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'everything is going exactly according to plan.' One of Rustin’s aides looked over his shoulder and saw that the pad Rustin was looking at was blank."

"There was, though, a dark side to the event, for it triggered an ugly and brutal reaction within one of the most powerful offices of the land."

"In the half century since ‘I Have a Dream,’ African Americans have made some great strides in education, political representation, and voter turnout. In other areas, it’s like nothing has changed. See the data."

"What, exactly, was King's economic dream? In short, he wanted the government to eradicate poverty by providing every American a guaranteed, middle-class income -- an idea that, while light-years beyond the realm of mainstream political conversation today, had actually come into vogue by the late 1960s."

"Many nights when Eleanor Holmes (now Congresswoman Norton), Rachelle Horowitz and I would arrive at Rachelle’s one bedroom co-op on Eighth Avenue and West 24th Street, we’d find Bob Dylan sitting on the sofa serenading my sister, Dorie. All I could think was I wish he’d leave so I could pull out the sofa and go to sleep."

"'From the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Great Smokies of Tennessee and from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia — let it ring.' Pastor Archibald Carey, Jr. spoke these words in 1952 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago."

Steve Thorngate

The Century managing editor is also a church musician and songwriter.

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